230
ISIS, XIV, I
SALIH'I AL-KHWARIZMI AL-KATHI
(See my Introduction, vol. I, 723).
Unfortunately they had only an incomplete Ms. of it, but in I925 Mr. found in the libraryof the NizAmof Hyderabad,a Persian Ms. STAPLETON entitled Tarjumah 'ain as-san'ah, which proved to be an abbreviated summary of the whole Arabic treatise. Its study was intrusted to Mr. MAQBUL AHMAD,lecturer in Islamia College, Calcutta, and the present publication is the fruit of Mr. MAQB'UL'S efforts. For a summaryof the Persiantreatise,I cannot do better than reproduce the editor's own words (p. 420). After some introductory matter, the Persian translatorasgoeson to give a similar list of chaptersto that which precedes the list of names of the sages in the original. The first chapter deals with the names of substances and their division into ' spirits ' and ' bodies '. The second treats of the description of the characteristic properties of these substances. The third deals with manipulation (tadblr) and experiment (tajribah), and the extent of their use. The fourth is the same in both Mss., i.e., what are the substances required for making silver (qamar) and gold (shams). The descriptions of the fifth and sixth chapters are also the same in both versions, viz. :- the fifth deals with the instruments for the substances (reading adwiyat for adwat -' utensils ' of the Arabic text): and the sixth with the substitution of one substance for another. The seventh chapter is here said to give the proportions of the substances to be used, and the method by which the work is most easily carried out with small quantities; but from the actual translationfound later, it will be seen that the translator describes 4, instead of the 2, ' pillars ', or major operations, which are referred to in the catalogue at the beginning of the Arabic Ms. The translator also gives what may turn out to be the ' easy processes in every useful branch of the art ' that are mentioned in the Arabic text; and this forms by far the most interesting portion of the Persian text. These processes, however, are given under the separate heading of ' Chapter on experiment by testing and the use of proper quantities': and it is quite possible that this portion of the Persian text may be an altogetherseparatetreatise. Referenceis also made in it to ' four pillars ' but the processes given are quite different to those previously given in the rendering of the actual text of the 'Ain as-san'ah.)) A longer analysis follows (p. 423-37), including abundant notes. In one of these notes (p. 428) an extract from a previously unpublished portion of the Arabic text is Englished by Mr. M. HIDAYAT HUSAIN, and that Arabic text itself is published in appendix (p. 459-60). This enables one to compare the Persian and Arabic texts. The treatise is discussed from the chemical point of view by Prof. B. B. DATTA,of Presidency College. For the technical details I must